#HorrorHound – Behind the Scenes: Part Three

I last left you with Shutdown, The Walking Dead, and “Are those Juliette’s clothes all over the road?” And yes, I know that was two weeks ago. I’ve been busy, but apologize. I felt the Christmas post was more important last week. And since I’m kinda finished with the dating site stuff, even though I still have a couple of months left on my subscription, I’ve decided to post this on a Monday.

Welcome back to Behind the Scenes of the ZSC. This will be the third post, covering two days worth of activity. Aren’t you fucking excited? I know I am!

Shutdown

Sundays at cons are generally either completely insane due to all the last minute crap or boring as hell, but then we’re all tired as hell by Sunday too. What? Did I not mention the 4am pizza and “It’s the Captain”? Anyway, this particular Sunday held both elements. As Paul (you remember him…the 6’7″ cutie who is my entertainment during boring shit and, well, pretty much all weekend) and I sat there yawning and waiting for our Starbucks, the con dragged on as people dragged themselves through the various rooms. This was the morning I found this most awesome sticker on a car in our hotel parking lot…

…whereupon owner of said car told us we could find it at the con. Paul and I looked EVERYWHERE during our walkabout that afternoon and couldn’t find the fucking sticker anywhere, although we did find some other really cool stuff, so if any of you find that sticker, I WANT ONE, please! Thanks!

First thing in the morning, I pulled down Norman’s banner to dispel any ideas that he might still show up at the con when we knew damn well he wouldn’t. Also? That way Sean didn’t have to answer more questions along the lines of “Where’s Norman?” and “When’s Norman getting here?” *sigh* Didn’t you people get the memo already? Oh, right, you’re not in the loop. Never mind.

I helped Juliette with getting Michael Rooker packed up and off to the airport, and then that’s about when Paul and I ran around the con. Until I got a call right about the time we got back to the booth, where Sarah was. Lora still had a migraine. The call was from Juliette, who asked me to send Sarah to the front of the hotel because Rooker had been in an accident. I shooed Sarah off to go help Juliette, and sat with Paul at our ZSC booth as Juliette and Sarah took off to go get Rooker. Don’t you just hate knowing someone’s been in an accident, but all you can do is still where you are and wait for news, which ALWAYS takes forever to get? I sure as fuck do, but what else can you do?

It turned out that Rooker was okay. A little stiff, but okay. Sarah is an emergency response person…I forget the actual title, but I don’t think it’s EMT, though she’s probably had that training. LOL Whatever. They get Rooker to the airport and start heading back to the con, where Paul and I have started shutting down because I’m bored out of my mind and am ready for the con to be OVER. No one was buying anything anyway and there were only two hours left. We get the truck loaded with all of our crap as soon as Juliette and Sarah return, and then I drove Sarah to the airport…where she didn’t make her flight for some stupid reason I can’t remember. Oh, wait, there was a TON of traffic on the way to the airport that is entirely too goddamn far away from Cincinnati. I think the Dayton airport was closer! This made Sarah late for her flight and even though her flight hadn’t left yet, she missed check-in by however many minutes and they wouldn’t let her board. Stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, but okay, Sarah gets to stay another night. While I’m waiting to hear the news about Sarah staying, I get a call from Juliette that Jack and John are on their way to the airport and I have Jack’s luggage in Juliette’s truck, so once I get Sarah back in the truck, we have to wait for Jack to arrive, which thankfully didn’t take long. Then we raced back to the hotel, headed out to dinner–sushi again–and back to the hotel to watch…

THE WALKING DEAD!!!

We got Paul to sign up on Twitter–Viccer–and he hasn’t touched the account since that night. LOL We also watched the Talking Dead later in the night and cringed when Aisha Tyler choked Michael Rooker. You could see in his face that he was still stiff from the accident.

Now, let’s talk about Monday…or as I like to call it, Zombie Day. Why was it Zombie Day? Well, let’s see…Paul was up before dawn to drive Sarah to the airport, Juliette was up entirely too early to work, Lora finally came out of her migraine coma, and though I’d had enough sleep the night before, I was still having to recover from the entire weekend. Check out was at noon, which I thought was a helluva lot better than 11am, but I was up and packed and ready to go by the time Juliette walked into the room at ten till noon.

We loaded up Juliette’s truck, because since I wasn’t heading back home until the following Monday, we were going to have to stuff all four of us AND our luggage (and let’s face it, Jinxie never packs light) into Juliette’s 4Runner. This would not have been an issue with my Avalanche. Yes, I like to rub that in whenever I can. 🙂 Of course, it really is sometimes good to have a man around because they’re generally pretty good at tying things up…

We had a lovely brunch at IHOP, where Paul decided to have a little coffee with his sugar. Jesus, man, how are you so goddamn skinny?

And then we were off to Maryland!

“Are those Juliette’s clothes all over the road?”

Approximately 15 minutes into the drive, and directly after taking the following shot of Juliette…

…we noticed the tarp on top of the vehicle seemed to be flapping a helluva lot louder than a few minutes before. In fact, the tarp was quite noticeable from Juliette’s window, and I looked at Paul and asked him if he tied the rope through the handles of the bags. Silence, but a look that said no. Uh oh. So Paul pulled off to the side of the highway, where he and I climbed out to inspect. I met him at the back of the truck, and he informed me that a bag was missing from the top. Shit.

“Whose bag was it?” I asked.

“Juliette’s dufflebag,” he replied with an expression that showed what a complete piece of shit he felt like, and I felt bad for him. Trust me, if you’d seen the look on his face, you’d have felt bad for him too. Poor guy.

At this point, several people have driven by to inform us that our bag was a ways back down the road. However, the issue with this was that people don’t seem to understand that when they’re in a moving vehicle and they shout something to people STANDSTILL on the side of the road, the words get all discombogulated and fucked up and WE CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOU. Fucking idiots. Except for the guys in the first vehicle that drove by, who were smart enough to slow waaaay down before shouting. Thank you, gentlemen. I actually understood you.

Of course, none of that mattered because a DOT guy pulled up behind us and stopped. I met up with him, he informed me of the bag, to which I acknowledged I already knew about, and he and I sat on the concrete barriers and chatted while Paul pulled the other two bags off the roof and MADE THEM FIT inside the 4Runner. Then we followed the DOT guy around and back about a mile until we found Juliette’s clothes all over the median. Actually, that was a good thing because ALL of her clothes were on the median and NOT in the road. Once we got her clothes and the two halves of her dufflebag back in the truck, I giggled like the bitch I am and took this shot…